How to turn off the noise during the Coronavirus crisis with Karen Garcia

Foreign. Welcome to the Boostly podcast. We are in season 8, episode 12 and we are in amongst the coronavirus crisis and this whole podcast series is helping hospitality businesses back and not only survive during this time, but thrive. Today's episode, what we're going to be focusing on, this has been recorded on Monday 30th March and I would say this episode has been one that I've wanted to do maybe for the last 10 days now. The reason why I want to do this episode is that if we can just help one person who is struggling at a time like this, doesn't matter whether you're a hospitality owner, doesn't matter whether you're a business owner, it doesn't matter whether you don't have a business and you're just struggling right now with keeping your mindset straight, you know, keeping your confidence up, keeping your spirits up. Then this, this episode is one that I want everybody to tune. It'll be about 40, 45 minutes, so it's going to be. Obviously the audio version of this is available on itunes right now. So make sure that when you are listening to this and if you want to go back and check out the show notes or any or anything else, just go to boostly.co.uk podcast, go to season eight right at the very top, you'll see this episode, episode 12 with Karen. You can come in and go back on it at any time. Go onto any of the social medias, it's UK, whether it's a tweet, an Instagram, LinkedIn or a Facebook message, please let us know what your thoughts are and if it has help. Like I say, if we can just help one person, this is my goal for this episode. So Karen, if you could please just take a couple of minutes and just introduce yourself, let us know a little bit more about you and how you can help everybody that is tuning in during this episode.

Hi Martha, great to be here. Great honour speaking to the community. I'm a mindset coach and mentor and this is what I do. Absolutely love what I do. Work with clients one to one retreats in Spain on mindset and work with business owners. A little bit about my background, what leads me to where I am today. I was in the Royal Navy for 20 years, served on board ship, had the very great honour of sailing around the world, around the Caribbean, posted out to Italy, had an amazing, amazing career. And sometimes people ask me, how long have you been coaching? I say, well, you know, it's been a lifetime. To be honest, I've always Understood people. And my leadership style in the Navy was one of man management, sort of understanding them, empowering them, helping them get out their own way, helping them grow. There was a firm, firm, firm form of leadership. But actually, you know, we empower the individuals within that and it was a natural progression. So I have multiple skills, psychology, cbt, nlp, a whole host of skills that I use in the mindset, coaching. I love what I do. So I, you know, I genuinely care about getting people out of their way in life and obviously also business.

Is there just sort of one little nugget that you could just share with people just before we delve into this, into this episode and a whole something that can give them a little bit of help and advice or a little bit of sort of something that we can get them started with. Before we go into the full topic of turning off the noise during, during these unprecedented times, if I was just.

To maybe single one aspect out, it would be to just take a deep breath, switch off from the external noise, just come back to yourself and the stillness within, really. Because as you said, there's an awful lot of stuff out there to distract us. So, yeah, just that sort of deep breath and just center ourselves and then just sort of refocus.

I think, I think breathing is something that so many people undervalue. You know, we obviously. Everybody needs to do it. Yeah, everybody needs to do it. We have to do it to survive. And me personally, I went down the WIM HOF rabbit hole years ago. And I know that he's been active very recently on social media and YouTube because his breathing techniques is actually helping people that are suffering with coronavirus right now. Obviously there's a ton of breathing techniques that you can do, but obviously he's got his dial that he doesn't. I know it's, it's. It's helped me over the years, but I have an Apple watch. I'm looking at it right now, and there's a little notification three times a day at least to say, listen, just take a minute, take a minute to breathe. And sometimes if you are feeling stressed, and this has been very stressful times for a number of reasons, not just business owners, sometimes it is just good to close your eyes. Can you tell us a little bit more about what areas it covers and what it personally means to you?

Firstly, I'll say that I hate labels, I hate boxes. I'm a natural rebel and I kind of kick against labels and boxes. But mindset kind of, you know, people have got into the flow of what it means to them every mindset, coach and mentor guess their style is very different. But mostly it's, it's getting your mind into the place where it gets you out of your way in both life and also business. So, you know, the way that we set the mind and of course the mind is so powerful that it will override absolutely everybody thing. And if the mind is set on a certain course of action, it overrides the body. The body gets exhausted, it overrides the emotions. The topics that we cover in mindset are infinite, which excites me immensely. Can cover things like relationships, money, mindset, where we may be getting in our own way. Fear, confidence, anxiety, living your best life, you know, it's, it just goes on.

What are the most common areas creating noise for people right now? I guess both within the hospitality community, which is who we're talking, but mostly to anybody that is, that is tuning in right now, what would you say are the most common areas right now that would be creating that noise?

So there's a lot of fear out there at the moment. And the uncertainty, I don't think you've ever heard the word unprecedented quite so many times recently. But yeah, there's huge amounts of fear. And obviously what fear does is it connects straight with that fight or flight that we have. You know, the adrenaline kicks in and because there's a lot of uncertainty, unknown out there, what it's doing is it's paralyzing a lot of people. So things that ordinarily, you know, you just do in automated, you'd get on and do it, you wouldn't think about it. You have your structures, you have your routine, you have somewhere to go and everything is just, it's, you know, it's, it's, it's robotic now. All of a sudden the entire world has been turned upside down. So obviously everything that we took as the norm, revenue streams, the places that we would go unquestioningly, you know, everything has changed. So it's creating a lot of a disturbance in the force out there.

You mentioned revenue money, and I know that you've been speaking to a lot of people that I know like and love about a lot of different things. Recently you've been very kind to give up your time to speak to Boostly Academy members. What has been your overriding advice? Like what been the best things that people can be doing right now when it comes to money worries?

I know that you've covered a lot of wisdoms, Mark, already with your videos, your lives and you know, out there in the community. But from a mindset perspective, what I'm finding is that because often in the hospitality industry, people are nurturers. It's very much part of their makeup to want to, you know, make their guests comfortable, to look after them, and, you know, do the right thing. And therefore, what we've got often is a lot of givers providing that level of service. So they are desperately wanting to do the right thing, understandably by their clients with that same panic that the world is doing and everybody's wanting to cancel. You know, there's all that fear again out there. A lot of the hospitality owners are feeling like they should be sort of giving refunds and so forth. Now, what I say is that I think right now, goodwill is a key word in all of this, and that it's imperative that smaller businesses do what they need to do ethically and obviously morally, because we are all that way. You know, that's how we work. Definitely your people, you know, you and me, but the honesty and the ethics, and it brings it back to a human level. So rather than. And I know that you've got a particular structure that you advise them on, rather than just maybe emailing or sending out written messages, clearing that space to actually speak human to human. Not cold calling, obviously, because I know we don't do that. That's none of us like that, but kind of warm, that area, because people come to stay with you in the hospitality community for a reason. You know, they love you as an individual. They recognize the care and attention that is put into that experience. They come to a beautiful, scenic part of the world, and that's what they're missing. That's what they're looking for. So we are like that lighthouse. Maybe they're feeling like that ship on a tumultuous ocean right now. You know, it's about finding that way where it's win, win, so they have something to look forward to and, you know, have that conversation. And I think, personally, anyway, I would really look forward to knowing that my money was still invested. It's money that I've already spent, that I've got something to look forward to at the end of all this craziness. And that could be the sunrise on a horizon of, you know, a lot of people out there.

Everybody has to remember that there was a reason why that person booked with you in the first place. There's. There's something that. Yeah, I mean, everybody can relate to this. That feeling you get when you click book and you have then got something to look forward to. I think we rule out that quite, quite easy because especially for a lot of hospitality owners that listening to this, we live in our property, we see it every day, we walk through the corridors every day, we go into the bedrooms every day, you know, but there's nothing we don't get that first time feeling that everybody else will get the first time that they drive up your drive or they walk through the door or they come into the room or, you know, they get to smells, the sounds and the sights and that is what the person who was booked with you has got. And obviously there's something that you've presented, whether it's through your pitches, whether it's through your copy, whether it's through a word of mouth recommendation that they've had, that I think that to delve in onto the topic of turning off the noise to me is where I personally and I make sure that I do this at the moment I'm very strict on it. For example, I'm doing these daily videos Monday to Friday. Every day I'm doing daily videos or stepping up and doing, going the extra mile Monday to Friday to help the hospitality community, helping the world of hospitality. And I'm also bringing in something new that will help even the book direct members as well. So there's my Monday to Fridays. Now we've got even busier, even crazier. My inbox is getting fuller because people are reaching out my emails and my Facebook. So I make sure that on Friday when I finish at 10pm My phone and my laptop goes off. I can feel myself drained by then. So this is me identifying that I need a break and then I don't even. My phone doesn't go on on Saturday and Sunday doesn't come on again until Monday morning. I make sure the weekend is social media free, it's computer free, it's inbox free and that's where I get refreshed. So that's me recognizing, recognizing when I'm potentially on that level of getting stressed. Now what are other symptoms that that could be things that people should be looking out for to realize that it's they're getting to that sort of level of stress. What should they then do once they recognize?

I touched on earlier about the adrenaline kicking in because there's huge amounts of fear out there and you know, we're in survival mode right now and we're reactive. When that adrenaline obviously kicks in and it's the fear of the unknown, obviously it's coursing throughout the body, it's going to heighten Our state. So some symptoms that we might be recognizing in ourselves, it's going to more than likely affect your sleep. You are likely to be looking for reasons to stay up later than normal. And that might be something that we do ordinarily anyway if we're stressed. But especially now that's been heightened. So it's putting that late night movie on. It's sitting there watching something or doing something that really you're not interested in. But it's like the later we stay up. For some bizarre reason, we think tomorrow takes longer to come, which is ironic, I know, because obviously it comes quicker when we are sleeping. Obviously that adrenaline is still kicking in and we're more vulnerable. So often it's going to be interrupted. We'll wake up tired and then therefore we carry that into our day. We're going to be affected on a clarity level. The memory may well be affected, the focus and that ability to be succinct, you know, if we're sending an email, if we're making a phone call often, maybe the words are eluding us in relationships. That's interesting because it's going to be testing our patience. Maybe we've got people in the house now that ordinarily we're not used to having around us. And obviously they have their own habits, shall we say, and their routines. But all of those are going to push our buttons. What's going to happen when we're afraid is the body perceives, because it's under attack, that it needs to take back control. So often the way that this presents is through self sabotage. All of us, it could be slightly different the way that we self sabotage. It could be eating, it could be both overeating and it could be under eating. That's a big one. Because we perceive if we can take control, whatever, you know, whatever, whatever we're eating, then there's nobody to really tell us that we can't have another donut or whatever is your thing.

We've identified the noise, we recognize that we're stressed. And I can pretty much guarantee everybody who is listening to this will have been able to relate to one of those over the course of the last last few weeks. What tips do you have or have you been given to people to help us move forward, to ensure that we get back to a decent mindset level?

Well, in honesty, it's never been a better time to focus on ourselves. And the reality is what's happening now for many out there is that all of our businesses have changed. So sometimes we become the business we Hide behind the business, especially if we're looking after others. So now that business focus and the guest, you know, interface is, is paused for now, then the reality is we're coming back to self. What we need to do is make sure that as we come back to self and the world is balancing itself back out there is that we switch off the distractions. Ordinarily, when we're out there on duty, you know, everybody has a piece of us, we're reactive. There's emails, there's phone calls, there's texts. You know, it's constantly like, you know, they're constantly accessible. So we need to start cutting down the ways that we communicate with the outside world. And you're going to have to be quite disciplined with this because for some it may be a bit like a weaning process to let go because it keeps us occupied and it stops us having to think about other things. So sound is a big one because, you know, the sound waves hit us and we respond. So it's a bit, a bit like Pavlov's dogs. Yes. And we hear the sound. What we need to do is switch off all the, the noises. So my phone, my laptop, everything is always on silent. I know where it is when I need to go check in. But if there was noise, it would be constantly pinging and that makes us react and that's not healthy. So we have to create a structure whereby you're only dealing with certain things at certain times of the day. So from an email point of view, set your autoresponder, make it, you know, manage people's expectations. These emails are monitored twice a day. Don't give specific timings so people are hanging on them, but just, you know, then access them maybe once in the morning, once in the afternoon. And you know that when you go to do them, you're done with it and you'll be massively productive. What you don't want to do is launch into dealing with the outside world too early in your day. When you wake up, you know you are in state theta, which is the same as meditation state. So it's a relaxed state. Your physical body is just coming to, so you haven't yet put your suit of armor on. And we're feeling exposed and we're feeling vulnerable. So if we wake up, go straight to the emails, go straight to the phone. The outside world infiltrates. It's going to, it's going to hit us. You're not in the position to deal with it. It's going to hit more deeply emotionally.

I Want to unpack a couple of things of what you said there because it's all full of actionable things that everybody can be, can be doing. So number one is the most simplest where you can go onto your phone. Right now I'm an, I'm an Apple Boy. I love my Apple Phone. So if you go open up settings and if you go into notification, you can go through every single app and you can go one by one and you can turn off every single note of notification. It's one of the first things that I do on every app that I download. And you can even go a step further where two options down from notification is one called do not disturb. So I have do not disturb on from three minutes into the new day until two minutes into the day ending. So it's on pretty much 24 7. And what that means is that only people that are in my contacts or preferred contacts can call me and it will actually make a sound. Everybody else, it just stays mute. And I go a step further is that if there's a number that calls me that I don't recognize, then it goes to voicemail and I will deal with it in my own time. There's so many things that you can be doing right now. But I found that by putting my computer, by putting my phone on do not disturb mode, by turning off every single notification bar one or two. So I've got some, some very clear ones that I want to be seeing. And that's not social media. Then it helps the mindset from a, from an, from an absolute starting point. Because whether you like it or not, and you can do this now by checking out your screen time, you can see your daily average of how much you're using your phone. Only focus on official news sources. Trust me, if there's something important, like really important that you need to know that has happen in the world, you will find out about. You don't have to be the first person to find out about something that's happened, whether it's grants or loans or lockdowns, just so you can be the first one to text your WhatsApp groups or go onto social media and say this. You don't have to be the first person. If you could just, I don't know if you're comfortable sharing like what your, what does your morning routine look like? And I'll tell you what my morning routine looks like.

So it would entail sort of working it backwards to the night before where I will go to sleep at a certain time. Obviously, in order to Get a good night's sleep and then wake up early. I like to be up and around, around about 5 o' clock in the morning. It's a beautiful time of day and I won't go online anywhere, check my phone or anything until a good couple of hours after I've woken up. And then it starts with, you know, usually a smoothie or a juice of some sort. And then having a stroll. I like to exercise, you know, without breakfast or before breakfast and just getting morning pages written, journaling, emptying my head for my own purpose. If it's business related I'll have emptied it onto paper the night before onto the laptop. But for me that is my time. So with that time I'll do. It's, it's entirely for me. It's not for dealing with clients, it's not for dealing on social media, it's totally for me. It's quality me time and a little bit of family time if it's appropriate. Yeah and meditation stretches, you know, workouts.

Mine's slightly different. I, first and foremost I make sure that I am in bed and asleep at the latest at 10:30. I'm one of 10:30pm I'm one of those lucky people that as soon as my head hits the pillow I can pretty much be asleep in a couple of minutes. Obviously I work night. I normally start work about 5, 5:30 and I'll have be finished for 10pm so when I've got 30 minutes to jump into bed and then like I said, I'm asleep now because I've got three children, one of which is a one year old who is going through the process of detaching from the boob. He sleeps with me at the moment. So we've got Laura in with the other two boys with Charlie and Alfie. So I've got Frankie with me and it's working really well because he's not waking up in the night anymore. So the reason why I make sure I'm asleep by 10:30 is that I know that he's going to start to wake up from 5:30 onwards and as long as I've got my seven hours, the reason why I'm asleep at, at 10:30 is that I can wake up 5:30 and I've had my, my solid seven hours at the moment we don't set any alarm so we just wake up when we wake up. My routine, my morning routine and I'm a, I'm a Tim Ferriss fanboy. I've followed him for about four years now and I've tried to have all of these fancy routines but what I've learned over the years is that you've got to have your must have that you have to do so you can, you know. For me journaling is a bonus. If I get a chance to journal, it's a bonus because I've got a one year old who's running around demanding all the things. So if I get a chance to do that, great. If I have a chance first thing in the morning to sit down just for one minute, close my eyes and breathe. Amazing. But my, my must have is that number one just like what you recommend. My phone is nowhere near the bedroom. The only thing that's next to me is the Apple watch because that's where the time is. If we set an alarm, if we had like the school run and things to do then we'd be up at 6:30, all of us. My first, my first thing is get a cough. My, my one thing to start the day before any technology enters my life, breakfast demands from the children is I got to have a coffee inside and I've got my favorite blend, I've got my macro pot and that, that needs to be done. Whether Frankie is attached to me, on my shoulders around or if he's able to be chilled out and sat down, that's pretty much the routine. But I find that by having a routine, by knowing what each step is going to be, it really helps. Like you say put your armor on, get ready for the day and, and as long as you do something that you enjoy, like for me it's coffee. I only have one or two coffees a day and I really love having that coffee. So it's. As long as you've done something that you really enjoy before you open up the WhatsApp or whatever, then I feel that your day can start off a lot, a lot better. I think there's going to be a lot of people that will want to reach out to you after this. Now what's the best process to do? So if anybody wants to contact you for maybe just a call or just a sort of a little reach out, how's the best way of doing so?

Well, I am in the boostly group obviously. I'm also in the hospitality community. You can reach me on Facebook, obviously under Karen Font Garcia, feel free to message me on Facebook, send me a friend request and pretty much, you know, it's a very unique surname so you're not going to struggle to find me on places like Instagram, LinkedIn, you know, you, you will Locate me.

The most important thing that I would recommend everybody to do and you can do this on any device is number one, this is a great place to start off with is just turn off notifications, those apps that you don't need to know about. Number two, set screen time on your phone. Again, it's one of the best things that not only I did for myself, but doing it for the children as well on their iPads by having set screen time because now they are home more set the structures in your day. So, okay, from 10:00am to 10:30am I'm going to go through all of my emails and get them done and then you say from 4:30pm to 5:30pm I'm going to go back on and all of my emails are going to get get done there. Rewind this episode if you want to do so. Go to the show notes booster.co.uk podcast. Go into episode 12 of season 8. We will make sure everything that Karen's mentioned about is in here and all of the little apps and the things that we, we've recommended as well is in there as well. Karen, did you have any final thoughts, any final takeaways before we end today's episode?

You said about alarm and waking up at a bit of even killer time now more than ever because your life is your own. I would say lose the alarms where possible or if you have an alarm, make sure it's not like the fire engines coming through the house. Make sure it's a nice gentle something that you would want to wake up with. And also start looking at your own body clock if you don't need to be awake body to recalibrate itself, catch up and sort of do what it needs to do so you're naturally energized. And also we don't necessarily know how long this situation is going to last. So this is a bit like training for a marathon and then maybe it's going to be a sprint. But we've trained for the marathon so we know we've still got the stamina. So what I mean by that is right now you may be still in that zone of fear and kind of feeling like everything is inbound. There may be a breath of realizing that you can now do all those things you've ever wanted to do. But I think what is helpful is that, and I'm just picking these dates out of thin air, I have no military intelligence on this one. Maybe look at planning three months ahead, six months ahead, and breaking that down and setting yourself a personal target. What is it you want to do, do you want to play the guitar, do you want to sing and express yourself? Is there a book that you want to write? But unless you plan it now, this time is just going to go by very quickly, day by day by day and then it does accelerate and then at some stage we'll be back fully into running our businesses wondering where this time went. So for some of you, that's going to excite you. Some of you, it's going to instill great fear thinking about spending that time alone. Either way, you know, I'm here, reach out, share these things with me. You do have the opportunity to have a call with me. I do work longer, sort of periods of three months with individuals. We go a lot deeper. But yes, look at you, look at your life, plan it, have a little bit of structure going on there and record your wins each time you achieve something and maybe that is getting up without the alarm, maybe it's ignoring the phone for a couple of hours. Reward those wins, you know, feel proud. Yeah, it's the best way. And reach out to ask me if you've got any other questions.

Thank you so much for coming on and doing this. I know that there will be a lot of people that will have appreciated it. I know that there are a lot of people just from seeing the post and the comments in the hospitality community that could have done with this. So if you have listened to it to the end, please do me a massive favor. Go on to any of the social mediasly uk, tell us your thoughts, your feedbacks, tell us what you're going to do in these times, all of this time that you potentially have in your day. Are you going to waste it looking and scrolling through Facebook groups and trying to pick arguments with strangers? Are you going to waste it by watching that seven part series on Netflix? Are you actually going to do it and put it to good effect? Now that could be like you say, making some money by selling some things on ebay. You could be starting up a little side hustle in your business or you could be doing something like learning to play a musical instrument or trying to perfect a skill maybe and then you can start to do an online course in it yourself. You know, there's so many talented and amazing people in the hospitality community who have got careers that span way beyond bed and breakfast or rental. They've done so many different, different things and you could maybe just retune one of them, bring it online and you can maybe start teaching it to somebody on a one on one basis yourself. So there's so many ways and means and things that you could do. But I think before you get all excited and try doing all of the thing, just start with the struct. If there's one thing that I have learned from Tim Ferriss and he's interviewed some of the biggest CEOs, the most world class individuals, but he said that everybody that he spoke to, the most common feedback response that he gets when he asked about what has helped you get to where you are, it's structure and a morning routine. So start with that, reverse engineer everything else and who knows, by the time that all of this is over by putting that structure in place, it won't feel so busy. So with that, I'll leave it there. I really, really, really enjoyed it. It's nice to have a different type of conversation for the Boostly podcast. I hope you've enjoyed it too. Please go and leave a review on itunes. Go into the itunes itself, click on Reviews, leave a review. And if you're not on itunes, just head into any of the other platforms where you can leave a review. But please tell somebody about it. Please share it with one person, go into a Facebook group, tag it in, take the blog post for this episode and just share it with anybody that you know that could do with a little bit of help. Thank you so much for tuning and I'll be back very soon for another Boostly podcast as we are helping everybody get proactive during the Corona crisis.